Who Is This Book For?

This book is aimed at anyone who knows the Java language and core APIs and wants to learn about web programming with the latest versions of the JSP and Servlet APIs.

Familiarity with HTML is required; however, no prior knowledge of server-side Java programming is necessary. Having said that, this book does not claim to be exhaustive in all areas, particularly in relation to other Java APIs such as Enterprise JavaBeans.

This book covers the latest versions of the JSP and Servlet specifications–versions 2.0 and 2.4 respectively, both of which are new specifications developed through the Java Community Process (http://java.sun.com/aboutJava/communityprocess/).

 Note  It's possible that some small changes might be made before they're finally released; however, any modifications are likely to be minor and the new specifications are already being implemented by a number of products such as Tomcat 5.0.
 

Those who have read previous editions of this book will notice that this edition is not a revision of Professional JSP, 2nd Edition; rather, it has been "re-coded from the ground up" to address the newest features of Java web development. A lot has changed since the second edition, which was only published back in April 2001!

If you already have some exposure to server Java web development, you should pay attention to any changes in the technologies that are indicated throughout the book, or skip ahead to the sections that interest you the most. On the other hand, if you're new to JSP, servlets, and JSTL, and this is somewhat confusing, you've come to the right place; the early chapters in this book, especially, were written with you in mind.

The book's chapters can be summarized as follows:

Chapter 1, The Anatomy of a JavaServer Page, looks at the JSP life cycle, JSP application architecture, and the fundamentals of JSP pages, and provides a feel for where JSP technology fits within the J2EE and other web components such as servlets, tag libraries, and JavaBeans, which exist in the J2EE web tier for providing dynamic web-based content.

Chapter 2, Servlets and Deployment, delves into what Java servlets are, and looks at the development and deployment of Java servlets. The Servlet and JSP specifications are developed in parallel, and this chapter is up to date for the latest release of JSP 2.0 and Servlets 2.4 (as is the rest of the book).

We discuss one of the new features of the JSP 2.0 specification in the appropriately named Chapter 3, The JavaServer Pages Expression Language. The JSP expression language is what you'll be using most often in JSP pages, an intentionally simple language that is, to a large extent, independent of JSP.

Chapter 4, JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library, looks at the reasons for the creation of the JSTL, its details (it is in fact four different tag libraries), and how to install the JSTL and Tomcat 5.0.

Tag Files and Simple Tags is the title of Chapter 5. In the same way that the tags contained within JSTL are extremely valuable for improving the readability and maintainability of a JSP page, you can build your own custom tags to enable your own functionality to be reusable and easily maintained. Tag files and simple tags are both new mechanisms for writing custom tags introduced as a part of the JSP 2.0 specification.

Chapter 6, Classic Tags, takes a look at the facilities provided by former versions of the JSP specification for writing custom tags. As you'll see throughout the chapter, these previous methods, now called classic tags, provide a great deal more flexibility and for this reason are still useful in some scenarios.

Now that you've seen the basics of building custom tags, Chapter 7, Custom Tag Advanced Features and Best Practices, wraps up your understanding by looking at some more advanced features and the best way to use custom tags.

Chapter 8, Data Access Options for Web Applications, discusses how best to access your back-end data from your JSPs and servlets. No matter what type of JSP application you're writing, you'll need to either store the data that is created by your application, or use data from an external source, and this chapter looks at examples using a MySQL database.

In Chapter 9, Introduction to Filtering, you'll look at filtering, a standard feature of all Servlet 2.4-compliant containers. You'll explore the life cycle of a filter as managed by the container, discuss the very important concept of filter chaining, and then create and deploy two simple filters as a foundation for Chapter 10, Advanced Filtering Techniques. Chapter 10 acts as a cookbook for the application of filters, as you turn your attention to the more advanced techniques involved in applied filter programming by looking at five examples that can be used as the basis for your own filter implementation.

Chapter 11, Security in Web Applications, looks at making your web applications secure and exploring different methods of authentication and authorization.

Chapter 12, Improving Web Application Performance and Scalability, is your guide to a number of well-known tools and techniques such as page caching and database connection pooling that you can use to improve performance and stability, even after you've designed and coded your application.

Chapter 13, Web Application Design and Best Practices, brings together the techniques covered in the earlier chapters and shows how to build maintainable, extensible Java-based web applications. It looks at the importance of good design and how it can help you build high-quality web applications that are easier to maintain and extend in the future.

In Chapter 14, Using Struts, Xdoclet, and Other Tools, you'll develop a resume building and viewing (web) application called struts-resume, using a variety of third-party products. All of the products used in struts-resume are open source and help to facilitate and speed up various stages of the development process.

Download the free chm ebook: Pro JSP, Third Edition